Washington Post Article

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The hard copy
with pictures is a much better version
and is available from the Washington Post. Also, if you register for free with washingtonpost.com, you can view the article online here, without pictures.

Wired Blog Network senior editor Kevin Pousen comments on Washington Post article and offers this excellent advice: ". . .If Weinberger really think that somebody she interviewed is receiving microwave messages in their head from government spooks, she should nail that story down tight and collect her Pulitzer. (Why not bring a radio spectrum analyzer to their homes?) Instead, it looks a lot like she exploited her sources' delusions to add color to an entirely
unrelated story on government mind control research. For shame."

Commentary

by Cheryl Welsh
February 2007

The January 14, 2007 Washington Post Magazine article, Mind Games by Sharon
Weinberger is stunning in it's coverage. The article is announced on the top
front
page of the Washington Post with the heading; "IS IT PARANOIA? OR THE
PENTAGON? To most, the people who think the government is beaming voices
into their heads are paranoid loonies in foil helmets. Trouble is, the
govenment has pursued weapons tht could do just that."

The full cover page of the Washington Post Magazine displays the picture and
heading "THOUGHT WARS One thing is certain about the emerging subculture of
self-described mind-control victims: Their agony is real" and the full
article encompasses amost 7,500 words. The full article is posted below and
is well worth reading. Weinberger seriously investigated the very
controversial issue of alleged government mind control victims, a topic that
mainstream media has avoided or has dismissed as conspiracy nut cases
without further examination.

The article has opened the door to much needed debate and serious, impartial
reporting and investigation. Not many human rights issues make it to the
front pages of a national newspaper. The article represents a major step
forward in mind control activism. A sincere thank you to Sharon Weinberger
for your long hours of research and to the Washington Post for this very
special opportunity!

The article is an entertaining and realistic read, while at the same time,
an accurate description of the psychological devastation and pain-filled
lives of mind control victims. There were indepth interviews of Harlan
Girard, director of International Committee on Offensive Microwave Weapons
(website at www.icomw.org) and Gloria Naylor, author of 1996, a book on her
experience of mind control. Naylor bravely and openly discussed taking
antipsychotic medication for the voices she heard but the medicine did not
stop the voices. The mental health field has helped many people who report
hearing voices but most mind control victims report experiences like Naylor,
and have not found relief from the voices by using medication. Although most
mental health experts do not believe the government is behind technology to
cause the phenoma of hearing voices, most victims and their support groups
leave it up to victims to decide what to do in regards to trying
antipsychotic medication or seeking out mental health experts. Many
desperately try medication to obtain relief.

Ed Moore, a young medical doctor described his inspiring efforts to study
for an electrical engineering degree inspite of voices that taunt him 24/7.
There were several shorter comments by many other victims and also military
and psychiatric experts. Weinberger described intelligent, talented,
educated victims of mind control and that most are not mentally ill, as so
often portrayed in the media. The experts in the article described victims
as having "highly emotional and gripping experiences" and as a result,
victims provide a "compelling narative" to explain their perceptions of the
experiences.

As an alternative explanation and the one that most mind control victims
firmly believe, Weinberger also provided several sections on government
research into mind control technologies such as beaming voices into peoples
heads. Here are some relevant excerpts from the article, followed by short
comments or questions IN CAPITAL LETTERS, for future debate and
investigation.

The biggest hurdle for TIs is getting people to take their concerns
seriously. A proposal made in 2001 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to ban
"psychotronic weapons" (another common term for mind-control technology) was
hailed by TIs as a great step forward. But the bill was widely derided by
bloggers and columnists and quickly dropped.

Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman, would not discuss mind control other
than to say the proposal was part of broader legislation outlawing weapons
in space. The bill was later reintroduced, minus the mind control. "It was
not the concentration of the legislation, which is why it was tightened up
and redrafted," was all Gordon would say.

WHY WAS WEINBERGER UNABLE TO OBTAIN BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON A PROPOSED
BILL FOR BANNING MIND CONTROL WEAPONS?

Concerns about microwaves and mind control date to the 1960s, when the
U.S. government discovered that its embassy in Moscow was being bombarded by
low-level electromagnetic radiation. In 1965, according to declassified
Defense Department documents, the Pentagon, at the behest of the White
House, launched Project Pandora, top-secret research to explore the
behavioral and biological effects of low-level microwaves. For approximately
four years, the Pentagon conducted secret research: zapping monkeys;
exposing unwitting sailors to microwave radiation; and conducting a host of
other unusual experiments (a sub-project of Project Pandora was titled
Project Bizarre). The results were mixed, and the program was plagued by
disagreements and scientific squabbles. The "Moscow signal," as it was
called, was eventually attributed to eavesdropping, not mind control, and
Pandora ended in 1970. And with it, the military's research into so-called
non-thermal microwave effects seemed to die out, at least in the
unclassified realm.

But there are hints of ongoing research: An academic paper written for the
Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of a weapon that would use
sound waves to send words into a person's head. "The signal can be a
'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or encourage
the enemy to surrender," the author concluded.

In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a
technology: using microwaves to send words into someone's head. That work is
frequently cited on mind-control Web sites. Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the
research laboratory's directed energy directorate, declined to discuss that
patent or current or related research in the field, citing the lab's policy
not to comment on its microwave work.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this
article, the Air Force released unclassified documents surrounding that 2002
patent -- records that note that the patent was based on human
experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were
able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with
marginal intelligibility. Research appeared to continue at least through
2002. Where this work has gone since is unclear -- the research laboratory,
citing classification, refused to discuss it or release other materials.

The official U.S. Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal
effects of microwaves. Yet Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA's
Langley Research Center, tagged microwave attacks against the human brain as
part of future warfare in a 2001 presentation to the National Defense
Industrial Association about "Future Strategic Issues."

"That work is exceedingly sensitive" and unlikely to be reported in any
unclassified documents, he says.

Meanwhile, the military's use of weapons that employ electromagnetic
radiation to create pain is well-known, as are some of the limitations of
such weapons. In 2001, the Pentagon declassified one element of this
research: the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses electromagnetic
radiation to heat skin and create an intense burning sensation. So, yes,
there is technology designed to beam painful invisible rays at humans, but
the weapon seems to fall far short of what could account for many of the
TIs' symptoms. While its exact range is classified, Doug Beason, an expert
in directed-energy weapons, puts it at about 700 meters, and the beam cannot
penetrate a number of materials, such as aluminum. Considering the size of
the full-scale weapon, which resembles a satellite dish, and its operational
limitations, the ability of the government or anyone else to shoot beams at
hundreds of people -- on city streets, into their homes and while they
travel in cars and planes -- is beyond improbable.

But, given the history of America's clandestine research, it's reasonable
to assume that if the defense establishment could develop mind-control or
long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would. And, once developed,
the possibility that they might be tested on innocent civilians could not be
categorically dismissed.

BASED ON THIS PRELIMINARY REPORTING BY WEINBERGER, MUCH MORE RESEARCH AND
INVESTIGATION INTO CLASSIFIED MIND CONTROL RESEARCH AND GOVERNMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY IS CALLED FOR.

A former Green Beret who served in Vietnam, Alexander went on to a number
of national security jobs, and rubbed shoulders with prominent military and
political leaders. . . . Alexander also is intrigued by the possibility of
using electronic means to modify behavior. The dilemma of the war on
terrorism, he notes, is that
it never ends. So what do you do with enemies, such as those at Guantanamo:
keep them there forever? That's impractical. Behavior modification could be
an alternative, he says.

"Maybe I can fix you, or electronically neuter you, so it's safe to
release you into society, so you won't come back and kill me," Alexander
says. It's only a matter of time before technology allows that scenario to
come true, he continues. "We're now getting to where we can do that."

Sharon Weinberger has released her freedom of information (FOIA) documents from the Air Force Research Lab Directed Energy Division. A special thanks to John McMurtrey (website at: http://www.slavery.org.uk/science.htm) for sharing this information.

Adobe Reader pdf files

One document is a 1994 initial patent by O'Loughlin for "A method for encoding and transmitting speech by means of the radio frequency hearing phenomena." The document stated: The uses of the invention by the government are described as: a) "A useful psychological warfare communications tool". . . c) A "no wires or receiving apparatus" communications method required for high acoustic noise environments such as: aircraft, space missions, and hostage situations. . . .

The final patent is O'Loughlin JP, Loree DL: Method and device for implementing the radio frequency hearing effect. US patent #6470214, Oct 22, 2002

One document [from Sharon Weinberger's FOIA request] is an Aug. 2001 letter from O'Loughlin to the Judge Advocate handling the patent case, and the other is a draft of the patent from 1994 which contains some different information than the final patent.

In the Washington Post article "Mind Games," Sharon Weinberger writes that she obtained "records that note that the patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility." But these were initial experiments, using the simple AM modulation (which would be expected to give marginal intelligibility). Using the actual process in the patent "will
produce an undistorted subjective sound; which is the invention," according to the draft of the patent. O'Loughlin's letter to the Judge Advocate states, "... the fact that when the signal is processed by the teachings of the invention the signal is intelligible has also been experimentally demonstrated."

As engineer, Eleanor White (website at www.raven1.net) has documented for years, voice to skull has been around for more than now three decades and is simple in operation. Eleanor writes, microwave voice to skull:

Is NOT a classified technology.

Was successfully demonstrated in 1973 by Dr. Joseph Sharp, then working with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Was publicly announced at a seminar given to the combined faculties of engineering and psychology at the University of Utah, August 21, 1974.

Was published, including the details of how the signal works, in the journal "American Psychologist" in the March, 1975 issue, in the article titled "Microwaves and Behavior" by Dr. Don Justesen.

Is simple in concept: For every high to low transition of the speaker's voice wave form, one single microwave pulse is transmitted, which is heard inside the skull of the target as a re-creation of the original voice. This is a primitive form of digitial audio.

The conversion of voice to pulses, then re-creation of the voice from the pulses, can easily be demonstrated by playing a voice tape into the input side of a common 555 timer chip, which converts the voice to a string of clicks. Connecting that string of clicks to a speaker will re-create the voice.

An experienced radar technician can patch a voice-to-clicks speech converter into a radar set which is powerful enough to cause clicks to be heard. This radar set will then function as a through-wall voice to skull radar transmitter.

Anyone with an upper middle class income has been able to acquire voice to skull technology since it was publicly announced in the mid-1970s. Those are all provable facts, not anyone's opinion.

Any radio technician can open up an ordinary radio receiver and connect a microphone into the circuit so your voice comes out of your radio. It is no more complex for a radar tech to patch a voice-to-clicks converter into radar circuitry.

http://www.raven1.net/v2success1.gif
American Psychologist", March 1975 issue, in the article titled "Microwaves and Behavior" by Dr. Don Justesen.This is the first page of that issue of the journal itself, with "masthead", i.e. ID of that particular issue, with part of the table of contents.

http://www.raven1.net/v2success4.gif
This is the page on which technical details of Sharp's voice to skull conversion of voice to pulses is explained. The method is simple and the excerpt is short.

Barker made the following relevant comments on the American Psychologist article.

Justesen reported in "Microwaves and Behavior," American Psychologist, March 1975, that Sharp and Grove had successfully encoded speech (the spoken digits from one to ten) in a pulsed microwave signal. The method reported in that article is essentially an FM modulation, rather than an AM modulation. That paper states that "the electrical sine-wave analogs of each word were then processed so that each time a sine wave crossed zero reference in the negative direction, a brief pulse of microwave
energy was triggered." That sounds like they are taking a Fourier decomposition of the speech signal and then using a frequency modulation on all of the Fourier components, simultaneously. The results reported in the O'Loughlin patent for AM modulation do not necessarily apply to the FM modulation methods.

For those who would like a more technical explanation of the O'Loughlin patent, Allen Barker further wrote:

The scientific principle underlying the invention, and assumed by the inventors, is that thermal expansion can convert microwave pulses to acoustic signals. As everyone knows from basic science, when things heat up they tend to expand, and when they cool down they tend to contract. Microwave pulses carry energy, and when a pulse is absorbed by biological tissue this energy is converted to heat. This causes the tissue to expand very slightly, and then to contract back when it cools. This is basically the
standard model for describing and analyzing the microwave hearing effect (and has been for several decades). A single microwave pulse causes a click to be heard. More complex signals can be broken down into strings of "clicks" by various modulation methods. The amplitude of the induced acoustic wave is (at least roughly) proportional to the power level of the microwave pulse.

The basic modulation method used in the O'Loughlin patent is an amplitude modulation. In a simple amplitude modulation, the signal is broken up into discrete samples in time and then the power level of the microwave pulse train is modulated accordingly. This is "an AM modulated envelope over a pulsed RF carrier train." This method unfortunately introduces nonlinear distortion which cannot be compensated for by preprocessing. It works for tones, but not for complex signals such as speech. This
is theoretically worked out in the draft patent, which also describes experimental verification that the simple AM modulation produces barely intelligible speech. The experiments were conducted at "the Air Force Phillips Laboratory during the week of 24 Oct 94, using the AM sampled data modulation process." Subjects could recognize the encoded messages, but only if they were told what the message was.

The patent actually makes use of a different form of AM modulation, the "AM double sideband suppressed carrier" method, which is linear in the amplitude and allows for preprocessing of the audio signal. They state (and show) that "conventional AM modulation ... is not useful for the implementation of this invention."

O'Loughlin points out in his letter that since the power of a microwave signal is proportional to the square its the amplitude, and since the acoustic signal at the head is roughly proportional to the microwave signal's power level, the microwave signal's amplitude should be modulated according to the square root of the original audio signal's amplitude. According to O'Loughlin, "This is the basic essence of the invention." It is essentially a preprocessing of the input audio signal. Other preprocessing
is also applied, for example to decrease the higher frequencies according to a spherical model of a human head (which shows "a 40dB per decade slope in favor of the higher frequencies").

. . . In a calculation in the draft patent, the sound level is calculated for a single tone sent via the AM balanced modulator method. A 1GHz RF carrier is used, with a power level of 100mW/sqcm. The calculation yields a sound level of ~50dB, which is said to be at the level of "a normal male voice at one meter." The calculations do not take several loss sources into account, though, and the actual sound level would be somewhat lower. It is calculated that the 100mW/sqcm signal could be applied
for ten seconds and stay within the ANSI exposure level at 1GHz.

The suppressed-carrier method only outputs power while a signal is present, so power levels would be much less of a problem unless someone were really being blasted by a constant auditory stream.

Mind Games

New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government is
beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has
pursued a weapon that can do just that.

By Sharon Weinberger
Sunday, January 14, 2007; W22

Washington Post Magazine

IF HARLAN GIRARD IS CRAZY, HE DOESN'T ACT THE PART. He is standing just
where he said he would be, below the Philadelphia train station's World War
II memorial -- a soaring statue of a winged angel embracing a fallen
combatant, as if lifting him to heaven. Girard is wearing pressed khaki
pants, expensive-looking leather loafers and a crisp blue button-down. He
looks like a local businessman dressed for a casual Friday -- a local
businessman with a wickedly dark sense of humor, which had become apparent
when he said to look for him beneath "the angel sodomizing a dead soldier."
At 70, he appears robust and healthy -- not the slightest bit disheveled or
unusual-looking. He is also carrying a bag.

Girard's description of himself is matter-of-fact, until he explains
what's in the bag: documents he believes prove that the government is
attempting to control his mind. He carries that black, weathered bag
everywhere he goes. "Every time I go out, I'm prepared to come home and find
everything is stolen," he says.

The bag aside, Girard appears intelligent and coherent. At a table in
front of Dunkin' Donuts inside the train station, Girard opens the bag and
pulls out a thick stack of documents, carefully labeled and sorted with
yellow sticky notes bearing neat block print. The documents are an
authentic-looking mix of news stories, articles culled from military
journals and even some declassified national security documents that do seem
to show that the U.S. government has attempted to develop weapons that send
voices into people's heads.

"It's undeniable that the technology exists," Girard says, "but if you go
to the police and say, 'I'm hearing voices,' they're going to lock you up
for psychiatric evaluation."

The thing that's missing from his bag -- the lack of which makes it hard
to prove he isn't crazy -- is even a single document that would buttress the
implausible notion that the government is currently targeting a large group
of American citizens with mind-control technology. The only direct evidence
for that, Girard admits, lies with alleged victims such as himself.

And of those, there are many.

IT'S 9:01 P.M. WHEN THE FIRST PERSON SPEAKS during the Saturday conference
call.

Unsure whether anyone else is on the line yet, the female caller throws
out the first question: "You got gang stalking or V2K?" she asks no one in
particular.

There's a short, uncomfortable pause.

"V2K, really bad. 24-7," a man replies.

"Gang stalking," another woman says.

"Oh, yeah, join the club," yet another man replies.

The members of this confessional "club" are not your usual victims. This
isn't a group for alcoholics, drug addicts or survivors of childhood abuse;
the people connecting on the call are self-described victims of mind
control -- people who believe they have been targeted by a secret government
program that tracks them around the clock, using technology to probe and
control their minds.

The callers frequently refer to themselves as TIs, which is short for
Targeted Individuals, and talk about V2K -- the official military
abbreviation stands for "voice to skull" and denotes weapons that beam
voices or sounds into the head. In their esoteric lexicon, "gang stalking"
refers to the belief that they are being followed and harassed: by
neighbors, strangers or colleagues who are agents for the government.

A few more "hellos" are exchanged, interrupted by beeps signaling late
arrivals: Bill from Columbus, Barbara from Philadelphia, Jim from California
and a dozen or so others.
Derrick Robinson, the conference call moderator, calls order.

"It's five after 9," says Robinson, with the sweetly reasonable intonation
of a late-night radio host. "Maybe we should go ahead and start."

THE IDEA OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE CONVINCED THEY ARE TARGETED BY WEAPONS that
can invade their minds has become a cultural joke, shorthanded by the image
of solitary lunatics wearing tinfoil hats to deflect invisible mind beams.
"Tinfoil hat," says Wikipedia, has become "a popular stereotype and term of
derision; the phrase serves as a byword for paranoia and is associated with
conspiracy theorists."

In 2005, a group of MIT students conducted a formal study using aluminum
foil and radio signals. Their surprising finding: Tinfoil hats may actually
amplify radio frequency signals. Of course, the tech students meant the
study as a joke.

But during the Saturday conference call, the subject of aluminum foil is
deadly serious. The MIT study had prompted renewed debate; while a few TIs
realized it was a joke at their expense, some saw the findings as an
explanation for why tinfoil didn't seem to stop the voices. Others vouched
for the material.

"Tinfoil helps tremendously," reports one conference call participant, who
describes wrapping it around her body underneath her clothing.

"Where do you put the tinfoil?" a man asks.

"Anywhere, everywhere," she replies. "I even put it in a hat."

A TI in an online mind-control forum recommends a Web site called "Block
EMF" (as in electromagnetic frequencies), which advertises a full line of
clothing, including aluminum-lined boxer shorts described as a "sheer,
comfortable undergarment you can wear over your regular one to shield
yourself from power lines and computer electric fields, and microwave,
radar, and TV radiation." Similarly, a tinfoil hat disguised as a regular
baseball cap is "smart and subtle."

For all the scorn, the ranks of victims -- or people who believe they are
victims -- are speaking up. In the course of the evening, there are as many
as 40 clicks from people joining the call, and much larger numbers
participate in the online forum, which has 143 members. A note there
mentioning interest from a journalist prompted more than 200 e-mail
responses.

Until recently, people who believe the government is beaming voices into
their heads would have added social isolation to their catalogue of woes.
But now, many have discovered hundreds, possibly thousands, of others just
like them all over the world. Web sites dedicated to electronic harassment
and gang stalking have popped up in India, China, Japan, South Korea, the
United Kingdom, Russia and elsewhere. Victims have begun to host support
meetings in major cities, including Washington. Favorite topics at the
meetings include lessons on how to build shields (the proverbial tinfoil
hats), media and PR training, and possible legal strategies for outlawing
mind control.

The biggest hurdle for TIs is getting people to take their concerns
seriously. A proposal made in 2001 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to ban
"psychotronic weapons" (another common term for mind-control technology) was
hailed by TIs as a great step forward. But the bill was widely derided by
bloggers and columnists and quickly dropped.

Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman, would not discuss mind control other
than to say the proposal was part of broader legislation outlawing weapons
in space. The bill was later reintroduced, minus the mind control. "It was
not the concentration of the legislation, which is why it was tightened up
and redrafted," was all Gordon would say.

Unable to garner much support from their elected representatives, TIs have
started their own PR campaign. And so, last spring, the Saturday conference
calls centered on plans to hold a rally in Washington. A 2005 attempt at a
rally drew a few dozen people and was ultimately rained out; the TIs were
determined to make another go of it. Conversations focused around designing
T-shirts, setting up congressional appointments, fundraising, creating a new
Web site and formalizing a slogan. After some debate over whether to focus
on gang stalking or mind control, the group came up with a compromise slogan
that covered both: "Freedom From Covert Surveillance and Electronic
Harassment."

Conference call moderator Robinson, who says his gang stalking began when
he worked at the National Security Agency in the 1980s, offers his
assessment of the group's prospects: Maybe this rally wouldn't produce much
press, but it's a first step. "I see this as a movement," he says. "We're
picking up people all the time."

HARLAN GIRARD SAYS HIS PROBLEMS BEGAN IN 1983, while he was a real estate
developer in Los Angeles. The harassment was subtle at first: One day a
woman pulled up in a car, wagged her finger at him, then sped away; he saw
people running underneath his window at night; he noticed some of his
neighbors seemed to be watching him; he heard someone moving in the crawl
space under his apartment at night.

Girard sought advice from this then-girlfriend, a practicing psychologist,
whom he declines to identify. He says she told him, "Nobody can become
psychotic in their late 40s." She said he didn't seem to manifest other
symptoms of psychotic behavior -- he dressed well, paid his bills -- and,
besides his claims of surveillance, which sounded paranoid, he behaved
normally. "People who are psychotic are socially isolated," he recalls her
saying.

After a few months, Girard says, the harassment abruptly stopped. But the
respite didn't last. In 1984, appropriately enough, things got seriously
weird. He'd left his real estate career to return to school at the
University of Pennsylvania, where he was studying for a master's degree in
landscape architecture. He harbored dreams of designing parks and public
spaces. Then, he says, he began to hear voices. Girard could distinguish
several different male voices, which came complete with a mental image of
how the voices were being generated: from a recording studio, with "four
slops sitting around a card table drinking beer," he says.

The voices were crass but also strangely courteous, addressing him as "Mr.
Girard."

They taunted him. They asked him if he thought he was normal; they
suggested he was going crazy. They insulted his classmates: When an
overweight student showed up for a field trip in a white raincoat, they
said, "Hey, Mr. Girard, doesn't she look like a refrigerator?"

Six months after the voices began, they had another question for him: "Mr.
Girard, Mr. Girard. Why aren't you dead yet?" At first, he recalls, the
voices would speak just two or three times a day, but it escalated into a
near-constant cacophony, often accompanied by severe pain all over his
body -- which Girard now attributes to directed-energy weapons that can
shoot invisible beams.

The voices even suggested how he could figure out what was happening to
him. He says they told him to go to the electrical engineering department to
"tell them you're writing science fiction and you don't want to write
anything inconsistent with physical reality. Then tell them exactly what has
happened."

Girard went and got some rudimentary explanations of how technology could
explain some of the things he was describing.

"Finally, I said: 'Look, I must come to the point, because I need answers.
This is happening to me; it's not science fiction.'" They laughed.

He got the same response from friends, he says. "They regarded me as
crazy, which is a humiliating experience."

When asked why he didn't consult a doctor about the voices and the pain,
he says, "I don't dare start talking to people because of the potential
stigma of it all. I don't want to be treated differently. Here I was in
Philadelphia. Something was going on, I don't know any doctors . . . I know
somebody's doing something to me."

It was a struggle to graduate, he says, but he was determined, and he
persevered. In 1988, the same year he finished his degree, his father died,
leaving Girard an inheritance large enough that he did not have to work.

So, instead of becoming a landscape architect, Girard began a full-time
investigation of what was happening to him, often traveling to Washington in
pursuit of government documents relating to mind control. He put an ad in a
magazine seeking other victims. Only a few people responded. But over the
years, as he met more and more people like himself, he grew convinced that
he was part of what he calls an "electronic concentration camp."

What he was finding on his research trips also buttressed his belief:
Girard learned that in the 1950s, the CIA had drugged unwitting victims with
LSD as part of a rogue mind-control experiment called MK-ULTRA. He came
across references to the CIA seeking to influence the mind with
electromagnetic fields. Then he found references in an academic research
book to work that military researchers at Walter Reed Army Institute of
Research had done in the 1970s with pulsed microwaves to transmit words that
a subject would hear in his head. Elsewhere, he came across references to
attempts to use electromagnetic energy, sound waves or microwave beams to
cause non-lethal pain to the body. For every symptom he experienced, he
believed he found references to a weapon that could cause it.

How much of the research Girard cites checks out?

Concerns about microwaves and mind control date to the 1960s, when the
U.S. government discovered that its embassy in Moscow was being bombarded by
low-level electromagnetic radiation. In 1965, according to declassified
Defense Department documents, the Pentagon, at the behest of the White
House, launched Project Pandora, top-secret research to explore the
behavioral and biological effects of low-level microwaves. For approximately
four years, the Pentagon conducted secret research: zapping monkeys;
exposing unwitting sailors to microwave radiation; and conducting a host of
other unusual experiments (a sub-project of Project Pandora was titled
Project Bizarre). The results were mixed, and the program was plagued by
disagreements and scientific squabbles. The "Moscow signal," as it was
called, was eventually attributed to eavesdropping, not mind control, and
Pandora ended in 1970. And with it, the military's research into so-called
non-thermal microwave effects seemed to die out, at least in the
unclassified realm.

But there are hints of ongoing research: An academic paper written for the
Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of a weapon that would use
sound waves to send words into a person's head. "The signal can be a
'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or encourage
the enemy to surrender," the author concluded.

In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a
technology: using microwaves to send words into someone's head. That work is
frequently cited on mind-control Web sites. Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the
research laboratory's directed energy directorate, declined to discuss that
patent or current or related research in the field, citing the lab's policy
not to comment on its microwave work.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this
article, the Air Force released unclassified documents surrounding that 2002
patent -- records that note that the patent was based on human
experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were
able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with
marginal intelligibility. Research appeared to continue at least through
2002. Where this work has gone since is unclear -- the research laboratory,
citing classification, refused to discuss it or release other materials.

The official U.S. Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal
effects of microwaves. Yet Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA's
Langley Research Center, tagged microwave attacks against the human brain as
part of future warfare in a 2001 presentation to the National Defense
Industrial Association about "Future Strategic Issues."

"That work is exceedingly sensitive" and unlikely to be reported in any
unclassified documents, he says.

Meanwhile, the military's use of weapons that employ electromagnetic
radiation to create pain is well-known, as are some of the limitations of
such weapons. In 2001, the Pentagon declassified one element of this
research: the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses electromagnetic
radiation to heat skin and create an intense burning sensation. So, yes,
there is technology designed to beam painful invisible rays at humans, but
the weapon seems to fall far short of what could account for many of the
TIs' symptoms. While its exact range is classified, Doug Beason, an expert
in directed-energy weapons, puts it at about 700 meters, and the beam cannot
penetrate a number of materials, such as aluminum. Considering the size of
the full-scale weapon, which resembles a satellite dish, and its operational
limitations, the ability of the government or anyone else to shoot beams at
hundreds of people -- on city streets, into their homes and while they
travel in cars and planes -- is beyond improbable.

But, given the history of America's clandestine research, it's reasonable
to assume that if the defense establishment could develop mind-control or
long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would. And, once developed,
the possibility that they might be tested on innocent civilians could not be
categorically dismissed.

Girard, for his part, believes these weapons were not only developed but
were also tested on him more than 20 years ago.

What would the government gain by torturing him? Again, Girard found what
he believed to be an explanation, or at least a precedent: During the Cold
War, the government conducted radiation experiments on scores of unwitting
victims, essentially using them as human guinea pigs. Girard came to believe
that he, too, was a walking experiment.

Not that Girard thinks his selection was totally random: He believes he
was targeted because of a disparaging remark he made to a Republican
fundraiser about George H.W. Bush in the early 1980s. Later, Girard says,
the voices confirmed his suspicion.

"One night I was going to bed; the usual drivel was going on," he says.
"The constant stream of drivel. I was just about to go to bed, and a voice
says: 'Mr. Girard, do you know who was in our studio with us? That was
George Bush, vice president of the United States.'"

GIRARD'S STORY, HOWEVER STRANGE, reflects what TIs around the world
report: a chance encounter with a government agency or official, followed by
surveillance and gang stalking, and then, in many cases, voices, and pain
similar to electric shocks. Some in the community have taken it upon
themselves to document as many cases as possible. One TI from California
conducted about 50 interviews, narrowing the symptoms down to several major
areas: "ringing in the ears," "manipulation of body parts," "hearing
voices," "piercing sensation on skin," "sinus problems" and "sexual
attacks." In fact, the TI continued, "many report the sensation of having
their genitalia manipulated."

Both male and female TIs report a variety of "attacks" to their sexual
organs. "My testicles became so sore I could barely walk," Girard says of
his early experiences. Others, however, report the attacks in the form of
sexual stimulation, including one TI who claims he dropped out of the
seminary after constant sexual stimulation by directed-energy weapons. Susan
Sayler, a TI in San Diego, says many women among the TIs suffer from attacks
to their sexual organs but are often embarrassed to talk about it with
outsiders.

"It's sporadic, you just never know when it will happen," she says. "A lot
of the women say it's as soon as you lay down in bed -- that's when you
would get hit the worst. It happened to me as I was driving, at odd times."

What made her think it was an electronic attack and not just in her head?
"There was no sexual attraction to a man when it would happen. That's what
was wrong. It did not feel like a muscle spasm or whatever," she says. "It's
so . . . electronic."

Gloria Naylor, a renowned African American writer, seems to defy many of
the stereotypes of someone who believes in mind control. A winner of the
National Book Award, Naylor is best known for her acclaimed novel, The Women
of Brewster Place, which described a group of women living in a poor urban
neighborhood and was later made into a miniseries by Oprah Winfrey.

But in 2005, she published a lesser-known work, 1996, a
semi-autobiographical book describing her experience as a TI. "I didn't want
to tell this story. It's going to take courage. Perhaps more courage than I
possess, but they've left me no alternatives," Naylor writes at the
beginning of her book. "I am in a battle for my mind. If I stop now, they'll
have won, and I will lose myself." The book is coherent, if hard to believe.
It's also marked by disturbing passages describing how Jewish American
agents were responsible for Naylor's surveillance. "Of the many cars that
kept coming and going down my road, most were driven by Jews," she writes in
the book. When asked about that passage in a recent interview, she defended
her logic: Being from New York, she claimed, she can recognize Jews.

Naylor lives on a quiet street in Brooklyn in a majestic brownstone with
an interior featuring intricate woodwork and tasteful decorations that
attest to a successful literary career. She speaks about her situation
calmly, occasionally laughing at her own predicament and her struggle with
what she originally thought was mental illness. "I would observe myself,"
she explains. "I would lie in bed while the conversations were going on, and
I'd ask: Maybe it is schizophrenia?"

Like Girard, Naylor describes what she calls "street theater" -- incidents
that might be dismissed by others as coincidental, but which Naylor believes
were set up. She noticed suspicious cars driving by her isolated vacation
home. On an airplane, fellow passengers mimicked her every movement -- like
mimes on a street.

Voices similar to those in Girard's case followed -- taunting voices
cursing her, telling her she was stupid, that she couldn't write.
Expletive-laced language filled her head. Naylor sought help from a
psychiatrist and received a prescription for an antipsychotic drug. But the
medication failed to stop the voices, she says, which only added to her
conviction that the harassment was real.

For almost four years, Naylor says, the voices prevented her from writing.
In 2000, she says, around the time she discovered the mind-control forums,
the voices stopped and the surveillance tapered off. It was then that she
began writing 1996 as a "catharsis."

Colleagues urged Naylor not to publish the book, saying she would destroy
her reputation. But she did publish, albeit with a small publishing house.
The book was generally ignored by critics but embraced by TIs.

Naylor is not the first writer to describe such a personal descent. Evelyn
Waugh, one of the great novelists of the 20th century, details similar
experiences in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Waugh's book, published in
1957, has eerie similarities to Naylor's.
Embarking on a recuperative cruise, Pinfold begins to hear voices on the
ship that he believes are part of a wireless system capable of broadcasting
into his head; he believes the instigator recruited fellow passengers to act
as operatives; and he describes "performances" put on by passengers directed
at him yet meant to look innocuous to others.

Waugh wrote his book several years after recovering from a similar episode
and realizing that the voices and paranoia were the result of drug-induced
hallucinations.

Naylor, who hasn't written a book since 1996, is now back at work on an
historical novel she hopes will return her to the literary mainstream. She
remains convinced that she was targeted by mind control. The many echoes of
her ordeal she sees on the mind-control forums reassure her she's not crazy,
she says.

Of course, some of the things she sees on the forum do strike her as
crazy. "But who I am to say?" she says. "Maybe I sound crazy to somebody
else."

SOME TIS, SUCH AS ED MOORE, A YOUNG MEDICAL DOCTOR, take a slightly more
skeptical approach. He criticizes what he calls the "wacky claims" of TIs
who blame various government agencies or groups of people without any proof.
"I have yet to see a claim of who is behind this that has any data to
support it," he writes.

Nonetheless, Moore still believes the voices in his head are the result of
mind control and that the U.S. government is the most likely culprit. Moore
started hearing voices in 2003, just as he completed his medical residency
in anesthesiology; he was pulling an all-nighter studying for board exams
when he heard voices coming from a nearby house commenting on him, on his
abilities as a doctor, on his sanity. At first, he thought he was simply
overhearing conversations through walls (much as Waugh's fictional alter ego
first thought), but when no one else could hear the voices, he realized they
were in his head. Moore went through a traumatic two years, including
hospitalization for depression with auditory hallucinations.

"One tries to convince friends and family that you are being
electronically harassed with voices that only you can hear," he writes in an
e-mail. "You learn to stop doing that. They don't believe you, and they
become sad and concerned, and it amplifies your own depression when you have
voices screaming at you and your friends and family looking at you as a
helpless, sick, mentally unbalanced wreck."

He says he grew frustrated with anti-psychotic medications meant to stop
the voices, both because the treatments didn't work and because
psychiatrists showed no interest in what the voices were telling him. He
began to look for some other way to cope.

"In March of 2005, I started looking up support groups on the Internet,"
he wrote. "My wife would cry when she would see these sites, knowing I still
heard voices, but I did not know what else to do." In 2006, he says, his
wife, who had stood by him for three years, filed for divorce.

Moore, like other TIs, is cautious about sharing details of his life. He
worries about looking foolish to friends and colleagues -- but he says that
risk is ultimately worthwhile if he can bring attention to the issue.

With his father's financial help, Moore is now studying for an electrical
engineering degree at the University of Texas at San Antonio, hoping to
prove that V2K, the technology to send voices into people's heads, is real.
Being in school, around other people, helps him cope, he writes, but the
voices continue to taunt him.

Recently, he says, they told him: "We'll never stop [messing] with you."

A WEEK BEFORE THE TIS RALLY ON THE NATIONAL MALL, John Alexander, one of
the people whom Harlan Girard holds personally responsible for the voices in
his head, is at a Chili's restaurant in Crystal City explaining over a
Philly cheese steak and fries why the United States needs mind-control
weapons.

A former Green Beret who served in Vietnam, Alexander went on to a number
of national security jobs, and rubbed shoulders with prominent military and
political leaders. Long known for taking an interest in exotic weapons, his
1980 article, "The New Mental Battlefield," published in the Army journal
Military Review, is cited by self-described victims as proof of his
complicity in mind control. Now retired from the government and living in
Las Vegas, Alexander continues to advise the military. He is in the
Washington area that day for an official meeting.

Beneath a shock of white hair is the mind of a self-styled military
thinker. Alexander belongs to a particular set of Pentagon advisers who
consider themselves defense intellectuals, focusing on big-picture issues,
future threats and new capabilities. Alexander's career led him from work on
sticky foam that would stop an enemy in his or her tracks to dalliances in
paranormal studies and psychics, which he still defends as operationally
useful.

In an earlier phone conversation, Alexander said that in the 1990s, when
he took part in briefings at the CIA, there was never any talk of "mind
control, or mind-altering drugs or technologies, or anything like that."
According to Alexander, the military and intelligence agencies were still
scared by the excesses of MK-ULTRA, the infamous CIA program that involved,
in part, slipping LSD to unsuspecting victims. "Until recently, anything
that smacked of [mind control] was extremely dangerous" because Congress
would simply take the money away, he said.

Alexander acknowledged that "there were some abuses that took place," but
added that, on the whole, "I would argue we threw the baby out with the bath
water."

But September 11, 2001, changed the mood in Washington, and some in the
national security community are again expressing interest in mind control,
particularly a younger generation of officials who weren't around for
MK-ULTRA. "It's interesting, that it's coming back," Alexander observed.

While Alexander scoffs at the notion that he is somehow part of an
elaborate plot to control people's minds, he acknowledges support for
learning how to tap into a potential enemy's brain. He gives as an example
the possible use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, for lie
detection. "Brain mapping" with fMRI theoretically could allow interrogators
to know when someone is lying by watching for activity in particular parts
of the brain. For interrogating terrorists, fMRI could come in handy,
Alexander suggests. But any conceivable use of the technique would fall far
short of the kind of mind-reading TIs complain about.

Alexander also is intrigued by the possibility of using electronic means
to modify behavior. The dilemma of the war on terrorism, he notes, is that
it never ends. So what do you do with enemies, such as those at Guantanamo:
keep them there forever? That's impractical. Behavior modification could be
an alternative, he says.

"Maybe I can fix you, or electronically neuter you, so it's safe to
release you into society, so you won't come back and kill me," Alexander
says. It's only a matter of time before technology allows that scenario to
come true, he continues. "We're now getting to where we can do that." He
pauses for a moment to take a bite of his sandwich. "Where does that fall in
the ethics spectrum? That's a really tough question."

When Alexander encounters a query he doesn't want to answer, such as one
about the ethics of mind control, he smiles and raises his hands level to
his chest, as if balancing two imaginary weights. In one hand is mind
control and the sanctity of free thought -- and in the other hand, a tad
higher -- is the war on terrorism.

But none of this has anything to do with the TIs, he says. "Just because
things are secret, people tend to extrapolate. Common sense does not
prevail, and even when you point out huge leaps in logic that just cannot be
true, they are not dissuaded."

WHAT IS IT THAT BRINGS SOMEONE, EVEN AN INTELLIGENT PERSON, to ascribe the
experience of hearing disembodied voices to government weapons?

In her book, Abducted, Harvard psychologist Susan Clancy examines a group
that has striking parallels to the TIs: people who believe they've been
kidnapped by aliens. The similarities are often uncanny: Would-be abductees
describe strange pains, and feelings of being watched or targeted. And
although the alleged abductees don't generally have auditory hallucinations,
they do sometimes believe that their thoughts are controlled by aliens, or
that they've been implanted with advanced technology.

(On the online forum, some TIs posted vociferous objections to the
parallel, concerned that the public finds UFOs even weirder than mind
control. "It will keep us all marginalized and discredited," one griped.)

Clancy argues that the main reason people believe they've been abducted by
aliens is that it provides them with a compelling narrative to explain their
perception that strange things have happened to them, such as marks on their
bodies (marks others would simply dismiss as bruises), stimulation to their
sexual organs (as the TIs describe) or feelings of paranoia. "It's not just
an explanation for your problems; it's a source of meaning for your life,"
Clancy says.

In the case of TIs, mind-control weapons are an explanation for the voices
they hear in their head. Socrates heard a voice and thought it was a demon;
Joan of Arc heard voices from God. As one TI noted in an e-mail: "Each
person undergoing this harassment is looking for the solution to the
problem. Each person analyzes it through his or her own particular spectrum
of beliefs. If you are a scientific-minded person, then you will probably
analyze the situation from that perspective and conclude it must be done
with some kind of electronic devices. If you are a religious person, you
will see it as a struggle between the elements of whatever religion you
believe in. If you are maybe, perhaps more eccentric, you may think that it
is alien in nature."

Or, if you happen to live in the United States in the early 21st century,
you may fear the growing power of the NSA, CIA and FBI.

Being a victim of government surveillance is also, arguably, better than
being insane. In Waugh's novella based on his own painful experience, when
Pinfold concludes that hidden technology is being used to infiltrate his
brain, he "felt nothing but gratitude in his discovery." Why? "He might be
unpopular; he might be ridiculous; but he was not mad."

Ralph Hoffman, a professor of psychiatry at Yale who has studied auditory
hallucinations, regularly sees people who believe the voices are a part of
government harassment (others believe they are God, dead relatives or even
ex-girlfriends). Not all people who hear voices are schizophrenic, he says,
noting that people can hear voices episodically in highly emotional states.
What exactly causes these voices is still unknown, but one thing is certain:
People who think the voices are caused by some external force are rarely
dissuaded from their delusional belief, he says. "These are highly emotional
and gripping experiences that are so compelling for them that ordinary
reality seems bland."

Perhaps because the experience is so vivid, he says, even some of those
who improve through treatment merely decide the medical regimen somehow
helped protect their brain from government weapons.

Scott Temple, a professor of psychiatry at Penn State University who has
been involved in two recent studies of auditory hallucinations, notes that
those who suffer such hallucinations frequently lack insight into their
illness. Even among those who do understand they are sick, "that awareness
comes and goes," he says. "People feel overwhelmed, and the delusional
interpretations return."

BACK AT THE PHILADELPHIA TRAIN STATION, Girard seems more agitated. In a
meeting the week before, his "handlers" had spoken to him only briefly --
they weren't in the right position to attack him, Girard surmises, based on
the lack of voices. Today, his conversation jumps more rapidly from one
subject to the next: victims of radiation experiments, his hatred of George
H.W. Bush, MK-ULTRA, his personal experiences.

Asked about his studies at Penn, he replies by talking about his problems
with reading: "I told you, everything I write they dictate to me," he says,
referring again to the voices. "When I read, they're reading to me. My eyes
go across; they're moving my eyes down the line. They're reading it to me.
When I close the book, I can't remember a thing I read. That's why they do
it."

The week before, Girard had pointed to only one person who appeared
suspicious to him -- a young African American man reading a book; this time,
however, he hears more voices, which leads him to believe the station is
crawling with agents.

"Let's change our location," Girard says after a while. "I'm sure they
have 40 or 50 people in here today. I escaped their surveillance last
time -- they won't let that happen again."

Asked to explain the connection between mind control and the University of
Pennsylvania, which Girard alleges is involved in the conspiracy, he begins
to talk about defense contractors located near the Philadelphia campus:
"General Electric was right next to the parking garage; General Electric
Space Systems occupies a huge building right over there. From that building,
you could see into the studio where I was doing my work most of the time. I
asked somebody what they were doing there. You know, it had to do with
computers. GE Space Systems. They were supposed to be tracking missile
debris from this location . . . pardon me. What was your question again?"

Yet many parts of Girard's life seem to reflect that of any affluent
70-year-old bachelor. He travels frequently to France for extended vacations
and takes part in French cultural activities in Philadelphia. He has set up
a travel scholarship at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the name of his
late mother, who attended school there (he changed his last name 27 years
ago for "personal reasons"), and he travels to meet the students who benefit
from the fund. And while the bulk of his time is spent on his research and
writing about mind control, he has other interests. He follows politics and
describes outings with friends and family members with whom he doesn't talk
about mind control, knowing they would view it skeptically.

Girard acknowledges that some of his experiences mirror symptoms of
schizophrenia, but asked if he ever worried that the voices might in fact be
caused by mental illness, he answers sharply with one word: "No."

How, then, does he know the voices are real?

"How do you know you know anything?" Girard replies. "How do you know I
exist? How do you know this isn't a dream you're having, from which you'll
wake up in a few minutes? I suppose that analogy is the closest thing: You
know when you have a dream. Sometimes it could be perfectly lucid, but you
know it's a dream."

The very "realness" of the voices is the issue -- how do you disbelieve
something you perceive as real? That's precisely what Hoffman, the Yale
psychiatrist, points out: So lucid are the voices that the sufferers --
regardless of their educational level or self-awareness -- are unable to see
them as anything but real. "One thing I can assure you," Hoffman says, "is
that for them, it feels real."

IT LOOKS ALMOST LIKE ANY OTHER SMALL POLITICAL RALLY IN WASHINGTON.
Posters adorn the gate on the southwest side of the Capitol Reflecting Pool,
as attendees set up a table with press materials, while volunteers test a
loudspeaker and set out coolers filled with bottled water. The sun is out,
the weather is perfect, and an eclectic collection of people from across the
country has gathered to protest mind control.

There is not a tinfoil hat to be seen. Only the posters and paraphernalia
hint at the unusual. "Stop USA electronic harassment," urges one poster.
"Directed Energy Assaults," reads another. Smaller signs in the shape of
tombstones say, "RIP MKULTRA." The main display, set in front of the
speaker's lectern has a more extended message: "HELP STOP HI-TECH ASSAULT
PSYCHOTRONIC TORTURE."

About 35 TIs show up for the June rally, in addition to a few friends and
family members. Speakers alternate between giving personal testimonials and
descriptions of research into mind-control technology. Most of the gawkers
at the rally are foreign tourists. A few hecklers snicker at the signs, but
mostly people are either confused or indifferent. The articles on mind
control at the table -- from mainstream news magazines -- go untouched.

"How can you expect people to get worked up over this if they don't care
about eavesdropping or eminent domain?" one man challenges after stopping to
flip through the literature. Mary Ann Stratton, who is manning the table,
merely shrugs and smiles sadly. There is no answer: Everyone at the rally
acknowledges it is an uphill battle.

In general, the outlook for TIs is not good; many lose their jobs, houses
and family. Depression is common. But for many at the rally, experiencing
the community of mind-control victims seems to help. One TI, a man who had
been a rescue swimmer in the Coast Guard before voices in his head sent him
on a downward spiral, expressed the solace he found among fellow TIs in a
long e-mail to another TI: "I think that the only people that can help are
people going through the same thing. Everyone else will not believe you, or
they are possibly involved."

In the end, though, nothing could help him enough. In August 2006, he
would commit suicide.

But at least for the day, the rally is boosting TI spirits. Girard, in
what for him is an ebullient mood, takes the microphone. A small crowd of
tourists gathers at the sidelines, listening with casual interest. With the
Capitol looming behind him, he reaches the crescendo of his speech, rallying
the attendees to remember an important thing: They are part of a single
community.

"I've heard it said, 'We can't get anywhere because everyone's story is
different.' We are all the same," Girard booms. "You knew someone with the
power to commit you to the electronic concentration camp system."

Several weeks after the rally, Girard shows up for a meeting with a
reporter at the stately Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where he has stayed
frequently over the two decades he has traveled to the capital to battle
mind control. He walks in with a lit cigarette, which he apologetically puts
out after a hotel employee tells him smoking isn't allowed anymore. He is
half an hour late -- delayed, he says, by a meeting on Capitol Hill. Wearing
a monogrammed dress shirt and tie, he looks, as always, serious and
professional.

Girard declines to mention whom on Capitol Hill he'd met with, other than
to say it was a congressional staffer. Embarrassment is likely a factor:
Girard readily acknowledges that most people he meets with, ranging from
scholars to politicians, ignore his entreaties or dismiss him as a lunatic.

Lately, his focus is on his Web site, which he sees as the culmination of
nearly a quarter-century of research. When completed, it will contain more
than 300 pages of documents. What next? Maybe he'll move to France (there
are victims there, too), or maybe the U.S. government will finally just kill
him, he says.

Meanwhile, he is always searching for absolute proof that the government
has decoded the brain. His latest interest is LifeLog, a project once funded
by the Pentagon that he read about in Wired News. The article described it
this way: "The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual
does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture
taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched,
every magazine read. All of this -- and more -- would combine with
information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep
tabs on where that person went, audiovisual sensors to capture what he or
she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's
health."

Girard suggests that the government, using similar technology, has
"catalogued" his life over the past two years -- every sight and sound
(Evelyn Waugh, in his mind-control book, writes about his character's
similar fear that his harassers were creating a file of his entire life).

Girard thinks the government can control his movements, inject thoughts
into his head, cause him pain day and night. He believes that he will die a
victim of mind control.

Is there any reason for optimism?

Girard hesitates, then asks a rhetorical question.

"Why, despite all this, why am I the same person? Why am I Harlan Girard?"

For all his anguish, be it the result of mental illness or, as Girard
contends, government mind control, the voices haven't managed to conquer the
thing that makes him who he is: Call it his consciousness, his intellect or,
perhaps, his soul.

"That's what they don't yet have," he says. After 22 years, "I'm still
me."

Sharon Weinberger is a Washington writer and author of Imaginary Weapons:
A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld.

Mind Control Madness

The Washington Post Magazine is open minded to the possibility that thousands of people are victims of government mind control experiments. Too open minded.

I once had a cellmate in federal lockup who was convinced the government, with the help of university scientists, had planted a microchip in his brain. He also heard people talking about him in the heating vents -- he'd sometimes yell back at them -- and believed that everybody around him, including me, had secret radio receivers on which they were listening to a private 24-7 broadcast devoting to spreading scurrilous lies about his character.

In every other way he was perfectly normal, and a genuinely nice guy. He was in custody for serving as a lookout in a marijuana smuggling operation, and he had a full and intelligent comprehension of his legal situation, and the statutes and cases that affected him. (No, he was not offering an insanity defense). If you didn't get him on the subject of the microchip or the hidden radios, you'd have no idea there was anything wrong with him, and he'd beat you at chess.

So perhaps I should write a 7,000 word story "investigating" the possibility that there really was a microchip in his brain.

Some of his beliefs are demonstrably false -- I had no secret radio receiver, and there were no voices in the vents -- so I'll gloss over those, or bury them deep in the article. That'll leave more space to write about how common his belief is: lots of people think the government has planted microchips in their brains. Surely they can't all be wrong!

The nice thing about this line of journalism is that it offers limitless material. In the '50s and '60s, mental patients believed that Russians were conspiring against them. In the '70s, they tended to think that NASA had placed a machine on the moon that controlled their brains. In the 80s it was microchips, and in the '90s it was the internet. Who's to say the CIA can't control people's appendages through their web pages. After all, as my investigative reporting will reveal, the internet is a product
of military research funding.

In 2007, the delusion de jour is that the government is beaming voices into victims' minds. At Wired News, we get e-mail from self-described victims of this attack from time to time. The Washington Post Magazine story by Sharon Weinberger raises the possibility that it's all true.

Weinberger's argument rests largely on the fact that the people she interviews don't seem mentally ill to her. Her article begins with that point. "If Harlan Girard is crazy, he doesn't act the part ... Girard is wearing pressed khaki pants, expensive-looking leather loafers and a crisp blue button-down. ... At 70, he appears robust and healthy -- not the slightest bit disheveled or unusual-looking."

The word "crazy" works well here because it's an all-or-nothing proposition. If you're crazy, you're incoherent, unkempt, odd-looking, and you can't dress yourself. Since none of the people she interviewed fit that description, there must be a germ of truth in their beliefs. Right?

Of course, as with my former celly, victims of mental illness aren't always the wild-eyed, straightjacket-wearing cartoon characters that Weinberger seems to think they are. I'm not a doctor, and I don't claim to have any knowledge of her interview subjects, but 5,000 words past her description of how normal Girard looks, she describe meeting him at a train station, where he suspects that "40 or 50 people" are there just to spy on him.

The other prong in her argument is the observation that the government really is conducting research into projecting sound using microwaves. There's even a patent. This is the meat of her article, and there's some fine reporting here. But with respect to her thesis, it is pure nonsense. The fact that there really were moon launches doesn't prove that the government was controlling people's thoughts from the lunar surface. Schizophrenics draw their delusions from a common paranoiac zeitgeist, distilled
from real life events, news articles, books, and, these days, websites.

That's what disturbs me the most about the article. By pretending that these people might actually be the victim of a secret government conspiracy, Weinberger and the Washington Post Magazine are contributing to that zeitgeist. This does a disservice to the victims of mental illness and their families.

If Weinberger really think that somebody she interviewed is receiving microwave messages in their head from government spooks, she should nail that story down tight and collect her Pulitzer. (Why not bring a radio spectrum analyzer to their homes?) Instead, it looks a lot like she exploited her sources' delusions to add color to an entirely unrelated story on government mind control research. For shame.